Tag Archives: Wasted

"While the Deebot 960 has impressive AI and a mop function, its potential is not being exploited."

• Great pull

• Don't eat socks

• App is not reliable

• Connecting to the app is difficult

• Dust container is small

• Features don't work well

We love many of the other intelligent robotic vacuum cleaners that Ecovacs has released. A few even made our best robot vacuum on the annual list. So I was pretty excited to try it out Deebot 960, It comes with advanced AI and it even wipes, so it sounded like a vacuum that our best-of list could do with the others. After trying it out, I was deeply disappointed.

The app

First, let's talk about the app. The Ecovacs Home app was the most aggravating app I've ever dealt with. As with most smart devices, you need to connect them to an app before you can use them with the app. Typically, this is a quick process that takes a few minutes at most. Not with the Ecovacs Home app.

It tends not to find your Deebot. Therefore, you need to go through a number of troubleshooting steps for it to work. Some of these steps include accessing the Wi-Fi settings on your phone and selecting the Deebot from the list.

If that doesn't work, you will need to try turning off the data on your phone, at least 5 feet from your router (or getting closer depending on the direction) and turning the bot on and off at the charging station. Pressing different buttons on the Deebot and so on.

After trying the various troubleshooting tips for the app and support pages on the website for hours, a customer service representative gave me an eleven-step process to try to get the app up and running. Yes, it didn't work either.

The app tends to stop working for no reason.

If you get the bot to connect to the app, you won't get too excited. The app tends to stop working for no reason. Then you have to delete the app from your phone and start over.

I thought I might have a problematic deebot right now, but a look at the app's reviews on the Google Play Store shows that these issues are common. (I contacted Ecovac to check for an update to fix the app issues, but I haven't received a response yet.)

mapping

This intelligent robotic vacuum cleaner offers many great functions. They just don't seem to work very well. The main feature is the ability to map your entire home using AIVI technology. The problem with this is that you have to scan your whole house. There is no way to create separate maps for each room.

If you choose to create just a map of your bedroom (like me), the vacuum cleaner won't clean any other room. While mapping your house, you need to have plenty of light in each room and leave the house with all of your pets so that the Deebot can create an accurate map. I just jumped on the bed and stayed there while it was pictured, but most people don't have that luxury.

However, it avoided the sock I threw in front of it, so that's something.

AIVI is supposed to scan the room so the Deebot can avoid objects that are too large to absorb, but the little bot didn't seem to know at times that it had this technology. It would ram into furniture legs with a force that set my teeth on the edge. It got caught on cords and I had to keep pulling things out of my grip. Deebot even came across its own charging station. However, it avoided the sock I threw in front of it, so that's something. It also didn't try to get under furniture where it would get stuck.

It has a feature that you can use the app to block certain areas on the cleaning card to tell the bot where to stop cleaning. Unfortunately, it didn't work that well. Sure, the Deebot won't go where you set up the non-clean area, but the app doesn't let me set up a non-clean area within 10 feet of the charging station. We have found that the Neato Botvac D6 works much better when it comes to restricted areas and avoiding obstacles.

You can also instruct the Deebot to clean only certain areas to get good stain cleaning. Like the other features, this was frustrating. I often tapped the screen to set up a spot cleaning area and nothing happened. After about a dozen taps on the screen, the square would finally appear on the screen and I could adjust its size and position.

In the following screenshots you can see how the Deebot maps areas. The green box is a spot clean. The red boxes are not clean areas. The lines are the paths that the vacuum has taken to clean the room. As you can see, the bot can be unpredictable and even miss spots.

vacuum

While Deebot does a great job at corners, backing it up and vacuuming it several times to make sure the area is clean, it still seems silly to an intelligent vacuum cleaner. However, the suction power is great. It actually sucks enough to fluff the carpet fibers over time, giving the floor the satisfactory vacuum lines like a post. When it comes to noise, the carpet is a bit noisy. It distracts quite a bit on hardwood and linoleum.

Alina Bradford / Digital Trends

My biggest complaint about the functionality of the vacuum cleaner is that the bot doesn't tell you when its dust container is full. It just keeps going throughout the cleaning cycle and fluffing lint around on the floor until it finds it's done and returns to the charger.

In addition, the dust container is tiny because it takes up space for the wiping equipment, so you have to empty it several times during a cleaning cycle. It is not very practical. The Deebot really needs to be able to dispose of its own container like the iRobot Roomba s9 Plus. The s9 Plus can empty its own container up to 30 times in a special waste container without having to touch anything.

One feature I really like is that there is a small tool next to the dust container that you can use to clean and unravel the roller. When you're done, the tool snaps back into a small slot so it won't get lost.

Wipe

While wiping seems to be an obvious and necessary function for an intelligent robotic vacuum cleaner, I feel that it didn't save me any time. Instead of filling a bucket, I had to fill the Deebot's reservoir and attach his little wipe. It also took ages to do a job that I would have done with a manual mop in less than 5 minutes.

Then I had to drain the dirty water out of the bot and clean and dry the wipe pad. In my opinion, this feature is not useful for any robotic vacuum cleaner unless it can self-clean like the new Narwal T10 that we saw at CES 2020.

Our opinion

The Ecovacs Deebot 960 seems to be a great idea that just didn't work. Though annoying like a champion, its features simply have too many problems to make it a good choice over so many other great intelligent robot vacuum cleaners on the market. While the wipe function appears to be a great addition, it doesn't save you time. Overall, the Deebot 960 is a missed opportunity to be something very special.

Are there any better alternatives?

Although it has good suction power, it quickly fills up with dirt and then doesn't tell you that it needs to be emptied. For this reason alone, I would probably use the Neato Botvac D6 or the iRobot Roomba s9 Plus. $ 1,150 is also far too high for what the 960 has to offer.

Will it take?

Ecovac generally makes well-designed robotic vacuum cleaners, and the Deebot 960 is no exception. It is made of very thick plastic with a metal plate that spans the top of the device. It seems like it will take a long time. It comes with a 1 year limited warranty.

Should I buy it?

The Deevac 960 has a lot of potential, but is insufficient in many ways. I would not recommend buying one. Even if you overlook the crazy problems connecting to the app, the features don't work as well as they should.

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